Murphy's Santer°a (1988) was a dramatic firsthand, if scholarly, account of that African-Cuban religion. The Georgetown theology professor's new book—equally scholarly and at once more controversial yet more subdued—more often employs others' eyewitness reports as he traces the threads connecting five African-inspired religions: Santer°a, Brazil's CandomblÇ, Haitian Vodou, Jamaica's Revival Zion, and the ``Black Church'' in the US. The author's basic contention—radical when he applies it to an expressly Christian church like the one he visits in Washington, D.C.—is that in all of these religions, the same force, which he calls ``the spirit,'' may be experienced and manifested by celebrants as they ``work'' it through physical ceremonies involving song, rhythm, and dance. A black Christian transported by ecstatic gospel singing, then, may be communing with the same spirit as a Santer°a initiate ``mounted'' by a Yoruban god—despite the different theological explanations given by the respective religions: The ``actions of ceremony are at least as important.'' Moreover, Murphy says, there's a reciprocity between community and spirit in these religions, with their respective ceremonies—which allow the spirit to manifest in the community—reminding the congregations of their African heritage. Murphy takes each religion in turn, looking at its history, rituals, and relationship to the spirit. His coverage of ritual invariably highlights each discussion, enlivened as it is by, in turn, Maya Deren's account of Vodou ceremony; a recap of a film of a CandomblÇ ritual, complete with possession; and his own observations of Revival Zion and black Christian ceremonies. Surprisingly, though, Murphy (who's white) relies not on his own Santer°a initiation to elucidate that religion's method of ``service'' but on a recent film, The King Does Not Lie. Though couched in well-mannered, even cautious, prose, Murphy's linkages offer a provocative new interpretation of the black American religious experience—one that's likely to inspire Afrocentrics even as it wrinkles the collars of conservative clerics and theologians.
Pub Date: Dec. 6, 1993
ISBN: 0-8070-1220-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1993
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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